Society and Morals. Part IV. Chattel Slavery and Civilisation. (1917)

From the November 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part III.

It was the growth of family and personal property which was the direct cause of the first great revolution in human society. In the “Old World” this was the result of the acquisition of herds of cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and the like. This probably arose through animals caught in hunting being preserved alive after the hunger of the tribe had been appeased. If this is so we can easily understand why, in pastoral countries, the domestic animals are usually found in the charge of the adult males. The men were the hunters, and although the proceeds which were required for food would be divided in common, where a residue occurred the captor was allowed to retain his “pet” (as the first tamed animals probably were). The animals bred and multiplied, and in time, as their utility in providing milk, wool, hair, and draught-labour was realised, they became a very valuable form of wealth.

Patriarchal Society.

This property in stock led to the abandoning of the old method of inheritance in the female line in which a man’s property (in the preceding stage only consisting of weapons, ornaments, and so on) at death could never go to his own children, who belonged to the wife’s gens, but only to his blood relations on his mother’s side. That a man’s children should inherit their father’s property male kinship was instituted, i.e., the children belonged to the gens of the father and could inherit his wealth without violating the old law decreeing that property should not pass out of the gens. Hitherto the marriage tie had been loose and easily dissolvable, now, however, to make certain of the fatherhood, it was strengthened and made permanent. From this point dates the “subjection of women,” but only as a gradual process, for the traditional reverence for the “mothers of the tribe” could not be wiped out at a blow.

The herds frequently grew very great in numbers, and where this occurred much labour was required to tend them. The household work of preparing food and turning the wool and hair into cloth was mainly performed by women, and while in the case of a poor man his one wife and perhaps daughter would suffice, to a successful and wealthy cattle owner more help was very desirable. This was acquired through polygamy. Wives were either seized by capture or, having now an exchange-value, were purchased, the price going to the father of the girl, who at the same time lost the value of her services.

“Besides the domestic labour performed by women,” says Jenks in his “History of Politics,” (p. 26) the herd owner “requires the outdoor labour of men, to prevent the cattle from straying or being stolen, to drive them to pasture in the morning and bring them back at night.” This labour was in many cases performed by slaves, and slavery first received an impetus at this period which was destined to have far-reaching effects.

Along these lines was evolved the “patriarchal family” which has been found to be so wide-spread in Asia, Africa, and Europe. It was, however, quite unlike the modern family, consisting as it did, not only of the patriarch or arch father and his wives, and children, but often of his sons’ wives and their children as well, together with a number of slaves, both male and female. The whole group was under the leadership and authority of the patriarch, which authority in many cases developed into a complete despotism, determining the life and death of those subject to it.

As agriculture came to be practised and gradually rose to supreme importance in the economy of Society, stock-keeping became a mere supplementary occupation, and the tribes settled down in villages as cultivators of the soil. Although at first the land was tilled in common, the practice developed of dividing the cultivatable land every year among the different households. After a time, with the growing recognition by the households that one years’ possession was insufficient to reap the benefits of the manures and labour incorporated in the lands that had been allotted to them” (Lafargue) the land was re-divided at progressively longer periods until at length each family came to have permanent though limited rights over a certain plot of land. Pasture and meadow lands, however, for a long time continued to be collectively owned and used by the village. Absolute private property in land was a much later development.

Meanwhile handicraft gradually separated itself from agriculture, the artisans (blacksmiths, wheelrights, etc.) who worked for the community being provided for in common by the village.

The morality of patriarchal society was that of the preceeding “savage” stage modified by paternal descent and authority on the one hand and family and private property on the other. In addition to the lessened respect which it engendered for females, the former stimulated to an even greater degree than hitherto a reverent regard for ancestry which led to a still more deliberate and conscious adherence to tradition and custom, and to a more definitely organised system of that ancestor-worship which the previous part outlined, as well as a disciplined subordination to the living patriarchs—the living representatives of the gods. Both in the strict artificial rules by which the labour in the village was regulated and in the hereditary trade castes (like those in India), with their secrecy and exclusivenese, were these principles manifested.

The growth of property resulted in theft becoming a crime in some cases considered even worse than murder. Especially condemnable was the violation of another’s plot of land and interferance with its boundaries. “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark,” said the Jews (Deut. XIX., 14.) and this sentiment echoes throughout nearly all barbarian law codes. The house—looked upon as the temple of the family gods—was particularly sacred and involiable. On the other hand the desire for property led to a change in the character of war, which was now carried on purely for plunder. Robbery (outside the tribe) was an honourable trade, as it is, for example, among the Afghans. Bordering on the sea this took the form of piracy, as among the early Greeks and the Norse Vikings.

As a defence against the frequent raids fortifications and walls were set up around a central citadel (“burg” or “acropolis”) and thither the craftsmen gathered and took shelter—thus towns arose. Loose federations of tribes passed into completely unified nations with a central administration at a point of vantage—and we reach the threshold of civilisation.

The Dawn of Civilisation.

All known forms of civilised society had their roots in patriarchal barbarism such as we have roughly described above. But they developed along divergent lines in accordance with their different geographical and historical circumstances ; and here we shall not make any detailed analysis, but merely deal in brief with the features more or less common to those civilised communities in which chattel-slavery was the dominating characteristic, especially with the best known—the Greek and Roman communities—but with sidelights from the older societies.

It is in the history of Greece and Rome that we can trace most clearly the final break-up of the primitive basis of Society—the supremacy of blood kinship. Long after the Greeks and Romans entered the “pages of history” they retained remnants of the ancient clan or gentile system. But as owing to trade, conquests, and other circumstances, a large population had grown up outside of the gentes, the gens, once a bulwark of democracy, had now become an aristocratic organisation the members of which (the so-Called Patricians) administered the affairs of the much more numerous “Plebians,” and used their privileges to safeguard and advance their property interests. Part of their power was derived from the fact that they alone understood the law, which, it will be remembered, is in patriarchal society ancient custom, handed down from generation to generation and kept strictly secret.

In both Greece and Rome, however, the Plebs, under the leadership of that section which had become wealthy through trade and other means, after a prolonged struggle abolished the privileges of the descendants of the clansmen by having the laws published and by substituting for birth or kinship, as the basis of organisation, residence in a certain area and the possession of property, thus making the community definitely political. The class divisions from now on were—rich freemen, poor “freemen,” and slaves.

The Prime of Chattel Slavery.

War continued to be the supply source of slaves, but with the growing demand consequent upon the increase in wealth and luxury, slavery instead of being the effect of war, now became the cause. “Both Nineveh and Bablyon undertook wars for the express purpose of obtaining slaves,” says Paterson, * and “the military activity of men like Tiglathpileser and Nebuchadnezzar had only one result—the overcrowding of the slave market.” At Athens slave merchants “were allowed to follow the armies, and were afforded special facilities for purchasing prisoners and for importing and exporting them” (ibid), and the same in essence applies to Rome.

In the sale of slaves in the public market many detailed regulations existed, not, of course, for the benefit of the slaves, but to protect the purchasers. From the famous “Hummurabi code” of Babylonian law we know that a disease peculiar to slaves was so widespread that dealers had to guarantee their slaves free therefrom, and the price could be reclaimed by the purchaser if the slaves he bought had contracted it. In Rome “slaves were submitted naked for inspection, unwary buyers were often deceived by tricks of the trade, and sometimes they sought the advice of veterinary surgeons, who pronounced upon the physical fitness of the individuals selected—the law required a public declaration of the slave’s character, and often a record of his conduct written on a scroll was hung round his neck” (Paterson, p. 271). For their better identification slaves were usually marked in some way. At Babylon “the name of the owner was often stamped upon the hand, and there is reason to believe that the brander of cattle was also the brander of slaves, or, like dogs, slaves were compelled to wear, probably unwary buyers) were often deceived by tricks of the trade, and sometimes they sought the advice of veterinary surgeons, who pronounced upon the physical fitness of the individuals selected—the law required a public declaration of the slave’s character, and often a record of his conduct written on a scroll was hung round his neck” (Paterson, p. 271). For their better identification slaves were usually marked in some way. At Babylon “the name of the owner was often stamped upon the hand, and there is reason to believe that the brander of cattle was also the brander of slaves, or, like dogs, slaves were compelled to wear, probably around their necks, clay tablets with the name and address of the owner engraved upon them” (ibid, p. 108).

As the slaves grew more numerous so also did the occupations in which they engaged. In the country they were employed by the Romans in thousands, often working together (frequently in chains) on great farms under the management of head slaves. At night they were herded in great semi-underground barracks. In the towns slaves were increasingly used in manufacture. Great numbers were employed in the houses of the rich. Prof. S. Wilkins in his “Roman Antiquities” says that in Rome “it was the custom for the porter to be chained to the door like a dog. In the great houses there was a slave whose duty it was to keep strict silence among his fellow slaves, and the slightest sound, even a cough or a sneeze, was punished with blows” (p. 69). Slaves could be hired from proprietors who kept large numbers of all kinds for this purpose.

The teeming multitudes of slaves assisted in, and really made possible, those monumental structures which even in our day are considered so wonderful: titanic walls, gorgeous temples, the “hanging gardens” of Babylon, the tombs and pyramids of Egypt, and the splendid roads of the Roman Empire, were all fashioned by the tired hands and brains of countless broken bondmen. Seen in this light much of the “glory and grandeur” of the “ancient world” so lauded by the orthodox historians has grim foundations.

At Athens slaves were habitually tortured to obtain evidence in law suits. “In case of either side being suspected of concealing any facts,” says Prof. Mahaffy in his “Greek Antiquities” (p. 73), “it was usual for the suspected party to offer his slaves for torture, and to refuse this when challenged was a weak point in his case.” As Paterson points out, a slave’s “voluntary evidence was rejected. He was not supposed to be capable of speaking the truth.” (p. 20).

As may be imagined, the punishments meted in Rome were typical. They are thus summarised by Prof. Wilkins : “For slight offences out to slaves were very severe. Those in use slaves were beaten with a rod, . . . severer punishment was inflicted by a whip or thong like the American cow-hide ; and the worst of all was the scourge made of knotted cords, with pieces of bone or even hooks inserted to tear the flesh. We cannot wonder that slaves sometimes died under the blows of this horrible instrument. That they might not be able to wince or struggle they were often hung up with weights fastened to their feet. . . . Death was but rarely inflicted because of the value of the slave as a piece of property ; the usual method was by crucifixion, one of the most painful forms that can be imagined” (p. 20). The feet of fugitive slaves were frequently amputated.

Social and Moral Effects.

The above outline indicates the views held regarding slaves by the so-called freemen. They were not considered members of Society ; they had no “rights,” and no duties toward them were recognised. Both in theory and in practice they were property—human cattle, so to speak. Varro, indeed, an eminent Roman agrarian writer, thus classifies agricultural implements : 1. The speechless, such as the waggon and the plough ; 2. The semi-speaking, cattle, etc.; 3. Those with speech, i.e., slaves. The theory came to be elaborated that not only was slavery indispensable to all cultural progress, but that slaves were designed to be such by nature. The classic statement of this view is thus given by Aristotle, the greatest of Greek thinkers: “There are in the human race individuals as inferior to others as the body is to the soul, or as the beast is to man ; these are beings suitable for the labours of the body alone, and incapable of doing anything more perfect. These individuals are destined by nature for slavery because there is nothing better for them to do than to obey . . . Nature creates some for liberty, others for slavery.” (Politics, I. 5.)

As slave labour gradually extended so as to embrace all branches of industry, productive labour, other than in art, came to be regarded as a rightful occupation for slaves only, and to be in itself servile and degrading. Especially was this the case in some of the Grecian States, where, as Prof. Mahaffy says (Ibid, 63), “any free man who was compelled by poverty to perform this manual labour was held little better than a slave.” War, politics, and, in Athens particularly, intellectual and artistic pursuits were considered the only “proper” occupations for a freeman, and were glorified accordingly.

We can readily realise the moral importance given to military service, for it was not only the means of acquiring the slaves so increasingly necessary, but was, and this was even more important, the essential safeguard against an uprising of the servile population which rapidly became far more numerous than the free. (Athens at its prime, for instance, had eighteen slaves to every adult citizen.)

As Society evolved in Greece and Rome, therefore, the citizens to an ever-increasing extent were divorced from productive labour, especially in the towns, in harmony with the contempt in which they had come to hold industrial pursuits. This was, however, doubtless a case of making a virtue of necessity, seeing that free labour was less and less able to compete with slave labour, for, owing to their enormous increase, slaves became commoner and cheaper than domestic animals.

The able-bodied freemen were, of course, required for the army, but so much was soldiering in line with their economic interests that, Greek soldiers not being in such constant and full use as were the Roman, they frequently enrolled for their keep and the possibility of plunder, with private military leaders, alien and even enemy governments, as mercenary troops.

But all “freemen” could not be soldiers, and we find that to a certain extent in Greece, and very largely in Rome, arrangements had to be made by the State to both maintain and entertain, in the cities especially, a horde of property-less citizens. Thus in Rome this proletariat received, as it was classically put, “bread and circuses.” The delight which the Roman citizens had in these latter “bloody shows” (free to all citizens) is an interesting study in psychology. In the arena slaves fought to the death for the amusement of the onlookers. Wild beasts from every corner of the Empire were pitted against each other and against slaves. The number of slaves thus slaughtered must have been prodigious, and was only made possible by their exceeding abundance and cheapness. Pliny justified these shows on the ground that they cultivated in the Roman a “manly” warlike spirit, and this was the general belief.

This, then, was the inevitable nemesis of the greatest development of ancient slavery—that which occurred in Rome : its canker rotted the Roman Society to the core. The wealthy, enveloped with every luxury, sank into a paralysing debauchery, and the poor “free” citizens of the “capital city of the world” largely became a mere clamouring, unprincipled mob, the dupes of every demagogue.

Regarding the ideas of the slaves themselves our information is very scanty. Every effort was made to prevent their discussion and organisation. As Paterson says (p. 187), “many slaveowners acted on the cruel advice of writers like Plato and Aristotle, who pointed out that, to avoid conspiracy, slaves speaking the same language should not be allowed to work together.” On the other hand, continued subjection, the conviction of the futility of resistance and the consequent hopelessness of their position, would lead in many cases to a despondent submissiveness and a spiritless resignation to the inevitable. Especially would this apply to slaves who had never known freedom, who had been born into slavery. But despite all this, there is undoubted evidence that many of the slaves bitterly nurtured their grievances, and occasionally their class-feeling rose to culmination in those revolts of which the best known is that associated with Sparticus the Gladiator. But these revolts always failed to break the disciplined armies of their oppressors, and the bleached bones and grinning skulls along the highways were a vivid record of the cruel price the slaves paid for the sake of liberty.

* * *

Morality and the Class Division.

With the development of classes the original character of Society as an organisation to secure the mutual welfare of its members is destroyed. Instead of the interests of every individual coinciding with those of the group, we have certain sections whose welfare is enhanced through the oppression, robbery, and degradation of other sections. The interests of these classes being opposed, the one to maintain and to extend its supremacy, the other to lighten its burden and to achieve its freedom, that spontaneous pulling together and social cohesion natural to primitive societies can no longer exist. The moral law which was a means of preserving the necessary order and stability in the earlier stage cannot any longer preserve this function (except where members of a class are deluded as to their real interests—a circumstance we shall consider later). Physical coercion must be applied or threatened if an oppressed and exploited class is not to be a disturbing and disrupting element in the social organisation. The slaves must be compelled to work and to render up their surplus labour-power, any attempt at revolt being promptly suppressed. This is most obvious where chattel slavery, as outlined above, is the system in vogue, but it is an essential feature of every class society.

Morality is, of course, not abolished, for social relations still exist ; but it changes in form and function. Just as morality was a bond, in the pre-war stage, between those having general interests in common, so it continues to be after the coming of classes. But this group with a community of interests is no longer the whole community, but a class within it. The ruling class has a morality which fits in with its interest, and, generally speaking, it uses the force which it controls in accordance with the dictates of its ethics, the main principles of which are expressed in its State-made law.

Likewise with the subject class, where its members think over and realise their interests as a class. It accepts, and as far as is possible acts up to, a morality which promotes these interests—interests the full realisation of which means social revolution.

R. W. Housley

(*) “The Nemesis of Nations,” W. R. Paterson, M.A. A work to be read for its full account of ancient slavery.

(To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part III. The Pre-Class Stage. (1917)

From the October 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part II.

In our “first part” it was stated that man starts out with a society akin to those of the less advanced animals in being an organisation to secure mutual welfare. Now, as we enter into the evidence for this, into the details of savage and barbarian society and morals, it will be useful to quote from authoritative sources. But before doing so let us briefly examine the manner in which the peculiar character of the human animal affects the manifestation, in him, of the social instincts.

Reason and the Social Impulse.

Among the simpler forms of animals impulse and action seem to be more or less identified: The gathering together of single cells is probably due to a form of chemical affinity or attraction. Even in the highly complex and social insects elaborate inherited instincts seem to determine even the details of individual action. But in the higher vertebrates, consciousness and intelligence make for the reasoning out, more or less clearly, of the precise actions to be taken to satisfy the social impulses, which, however, remain inherent. This makes possible a far readier adaption of conduct to varying circumstances. To an overwhelming degree is this the case in man with the relatively rapid changes and variety in his needs, due to technical evolution and division of labour.

But reason leads to results which cannot occur with unconscious reflex action which, with a given stimulus, always takes a certain inevitable line. Efficiency in a man’s actions, however, must be based upon a correct estimate of the essential circumstances he is in contact with. This itself depends upon the extent of his experience and the ability he has of analysing and comparing the various perceptions he receives. Consequently errors of opinion and therefore mistakes in action can easily occur through insufficient experience and defective reasoning.

Man is the victim of all manner of wrong conceptions and superstitious beliefs. This fact is apparent in the study of morality. In practice man’s activities are not determined by their actual interests, individual or collective, but by what they believe their interests to be. This belief, often correct enough in immediately practical affairs, is frequently very wide of the mark when concerned with complex matters which are known and felt only indirectly.

Speech and writing, which enable tho acquisition of the experiences and thoughts of other people, thus greatly extending the field of knowledge, also make possible the spread of wrong opinions, both unintentionally and as frequently happens, through a deliberate desire to bring about a certain mode of action.

These facts must be remembered when considering the problem of morals, for they explain the often useless and fantastic practices in religious ritual as well as the concern of a modern proletarian for his master’s interests and capitalist exploitation.

The feeling of duty, that “mysterious” conscience, despite all the weird talk about it, arises from a social impulse which, as we have seen, is animal, not “divine,” in origin. The social instincts, however, like all the other bodily and mental traits of animals, vary, being of different strength in distinct individuals, some men being potential martyrs, others moral cowards. In cases where conscience is too weak to enforce moral action, it frequently happens that respect for public opinion (itself generated by the social impulse) as manifested, for instance, in the love of praise and dislike of blame, ensures adherence to the code. But where, as in class-divided societies, there are widespread interests permanently opposed by the generally accepted code, the violation of which is therefore liable to be frequent, the force of the State is added to that of public opinion.

Primitive Society.

Although savages and barbarians have long been outrageously misrepresented by ignorant and antagonistic invaders, thieving traders and prejudiced missionaries, the patient and sympathetic methods of real investigators have made possible an approximately true idea of primitive societies and morals. Of this we can hear, of course, only sketch an outline.

Like the animal societies in which the offspring remain in the same herd as their parents, the earliest human societies were groups, usually small, of kinspeople, related in blood. Primitive man’s life was bound up with that of his community, without which he could not exist. Separation from the tribe or horde was the equivalent of suicide, for, alone, he was at the mercy of mysterious and terrible natural powers and the ferocity of alien men.

In primitive societies, both in practice and in theory, the welfare of the group is recognised as the supreme good, this, however, as we have seen, in the killing of the aged and infirm, necessitates the sacrifice of individuals in certain circumstances.

Social and Economic Equality.

The small yield of production made inevitable, in the beginning, equal division of the common produce, and the strength of social ties developed this into a cardinal principle. Even presents received are divided equally, as Darwin saw the Feugians do. Every able person is expected to aid in production. Hospitality and generosity are practised as a duty. Catlin, who lived for many years among the American Indians, says, “Every man, woman, or child in Indian communities is allowed to enter anyone’s lodge, and even that of the chief of the nation, and eat when they are hungry.”

Only the objects in permanent personal use, such as weapons and clothing, are regarded as private property, and often at that only very vaguely. “An Eskimo,” says Larfargue (“Evolution of Property”), “cannot possess more than two canoes; the third is at the disposal of the clan.” Natural resources may be freely utilised by any member or members of the group, providing only that it has the power to prevent other groups from acquiring them. Thus, although no private property in land exists, or is even conceived as possible, the tribe very zealously guards from trespassers its hunting grounds, and, later, pasturage territories or preserves.

So objectionable is inequality that when, owing to various circumstances, differences in wealth arise, periodical redistributions are made. This persisted until quite late in the history of the Jews.

The affairs of the community were managed democratically, all adult males and females taking part in the election of chiefs and speaking in the public assemblies. The chief wielded no despotic power, but only administered the will of the people. He could be deposed if occasion required. In the councils not even the majority decided: “Among the Iroquois the final resolution had to be passed unanimously,” says Engels in his “Origin of the Family.” (P. 112).

In dealing with internal disputes the sentiment of equality again manifests itself. A life for a life was the rule; tooth for tooth, eye for eye, wound for wound. To neglect to avenge an injury, or obtain satisfaction, is considered shameful. Usually, and especially in later times, mediation is first attempted by the public council, but, even after fines and other penalties are permissible the right to blood revenge could not be denied as a last resort. But to shed the blood of a kinsman was so opposed to the communal spirit, was considered so unutterably criminal, an injury to a tribesman being an injury to the tribe and treated by them as such, that it was a very rare occurrence. Speaking of the Aleoutes Kropotkin says in his “Mutual Aid” that in 1840 “one murder only had been committed since the last century in a population of 60,000 people.”

Fridjof Nansen says: “For the Esquimo it has especial value that he should be able to rely on his fellows and neighbours. In order, however, that his mutual confidence, without which common action in the battle for life is impossible, should continue, it is necessary that he should act honourably to others as well,” and he remarks about their truthfulness, which is a necessary factor in this. Veniaminoff, the Russian missionary, wrote, that the Aleoute is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he has made it he will keep it, whatever happens. Primitive man’s equalitarian habits harmonise so well with his inborn social instincts that he has no need to force his children to conform to a code of artificial restraints. A Sioux chief expressed surprise to Catlin at seeing “along the frontier white men whip their children: a thing that is very cruel.” “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is evidently not accepted as a motto.

Sex Relations.

The evidence available tends to show that man emerged from the ape condition with indiscriminate intercourse between the sexes. As primeval mankind developed in intelligence and experience the injurious elfects of close inter-breeding were evidently recognised, for we find at a very early stage moral restrictions placed upon sex intercourse, first between parents and children, and then between brothers and sisters born of the same mother. The covering of the sex organs probably became virtuous to minimise unrestricted sexual desire, for absolute nakedness was, in warm climates, habitual up to the period of puberty.

The mutual or communal marriage of entire groups of each sex has left traces of its former prevalence in the customs of almost every people, and the system exists to-day among the savages of Australia, as the recent investigations of Prof. Spencer and Mr. Gillen have finally and abundantly proven. As Jenks says in his “History of Politics,” “all the men of the Snake totem are husbands of all the women of the Emu totem in the same generation.” (P. 10.) Even after the marriage of a woman or several woman to one man became habitual, although at first in loose and easily dissolved unions, unlimited intercourse was allowed at certain festivals. Prof, Westmarck, in his “History of Human Marriage,” says Engels, gives “a whole series of examples of such periodical saturnalia restoring for a short time the ancient sexual freedom . . . among the Hos, the Santals, the Punjas and Kotars of India, among some African nations, etc.”

Out of the attempts to prevent close interbreeding arose that social organisation known as the “gens” or “clan,” The gens was a subdivision of the tribe whose members were morally bound not to intermarry. In its original and purest form all the children remained in the gens of the mother, no matter from which gens came the father, so that (except in the rare cases of adoption) all the members of a gens had a common ancestress. This was the only possible way of recognising kinship, for there being, as yet, no permanent marriage of women with one man, the father of the child was not known with certainty, and descent was therefore only traceable through the mother—in the female line. The material gens gave to women that respected and important social standing which she has in all savage and early barbarian communities.

With the division of the group into gentes the “horde” stage was passed and the gens became the unit of organisation until at a later date it gave way to the patriarchal family. The gens had its own chiefs and public meetings. “All the members of an Iroquois gens,” says Lewis Morgan, who lived, by adoption, in one for many years, “were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other’s freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachems (peace chiefs) and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by ties of kin.” In a modified form the gens persisted well into the era of civilisation.

So-called secret societies within the tribe are also a widespread feature. There are male “societies” and female “societies” into which the young people on “coming of age” are initiated and taught under the presidency of the aged and experienced the duties of their sex (hunting and fighting methods, the development of endurance, etc., for males; domestic work and the management of children for females) together with the “mysterien of sex.” As, however, everything is accounted for by spirit action or magic, the activities of the societies are frequently largely made up of intricate ceremonies, propitiation of spirits, sacrifices and other rites, all of which must be kept in the strictes secrecy.

External relations and war

The primitive motive for war was food—either the preservation or acquisition of hunting territory, or, at a very early stage, human meat, which, as we have seen, is necessary and therefore moral. While, within the tribe, each for all and all for each was the rule, making habitual sympathy and trustworthiness, to those outside the tribe, as a rule, the same did not apply. So in savage warfare extreme cruelties and what appear to us as horrible atrocities are perpetrated. The outsider, the alien, is not of “the kin.” has nothing in common with it. He is a spy upon the tribal secrets, a thief and a trespasser upon the tribal territories.

Practically all people outside the tribe or its related groups are regarded as enemies. Engels says : “Theoretically, each tribe was at war with every other tribe with which it had not formed a treaty of peace.” (“Origin of the Family,” p. 112.) To slay an enemy was beneficial, was good. Thus the scalps collected by a redskin “brave” are like the medals of many a doughty general—claims to the admiration of his follows. The Dyaks of Borneo collect the heads and adorn their huts with the skulls of those neighbouring peoples who fall into their hands. Yet these same men condemn murder within the tribe. As Kropotkin says (Ibid p. 15), in “head-hunting” the Dyak “is not actuated at all by personal passion. He acts under what he considers a moral obligation towards his tribe.” The Australian aboriginee “is a murderer when his tribe requires a murder to be done,” says Dr. Keane (“The World’s Peoples,” p. 49). “This state of things is not really contradictory,” says Tylor in his “Anthropology.” “The tribe makes the law, not on an abstract principle that manslaughter is right or wrong, but for its own preservation.” When tribes live in a condition of almost perpetual war, as do the Dyaks, “they put a social premium upon the warrior’s proof of valour in fight against the enemy.” (Tylor, p. 413.) Hence the record kept in skulls or scalps.

Courage and endurance are two of the highest of primitive virtues, and to acquire them deliberate self-privation and self-torture are practiced. The young men, incipient hunters and warriors, are tested as to their endurance of pain, and to wince or utter a sound under torture is considered weak and therefore shameful.

Tribal customs and religion. 

Primitive man with his meagre experience and knowledge changes his means of production very slowly. The early evolution of man’s tools was a painfully protracted process, little improvement being made throughout immense periods. The same continuous or constantly recurring needs are felt over a correspondingly extended time, and their satisfaction causes the continual repetition of practices which are ages old. That which is old, is tried and tested, is safe; new methods have unforeseen results, are mysterious and dangerous.

Moreover the savage and barbarian has other reasons for habitually following the traditional ways of his people. He believes in ghosts as firmly as he believes in the existence of bodily men. Not being capable of understanding sleep, dreams or death, he “explains” them as the wanderings from the body of a phantom or ghostly second-self. The spirits of the dead, of his ancestors, persist after their bodies have long since decayed. His kinsmen, whom he looks to and respects, are not only the living men but the dead also.

Those invisible inhabitants of the “land of the dead” are wiser and more powerful than the living men. They it is, thinks the savage, who move the wind and the stream, who howl in the storm and rustle in the woods. They must be honoured and conciliated, care being taken not to make them angry. The customs which the venerated ancestors practised in life must be faithfully adhered to by their living descendents who look to them for aid in times of dire distress. (*)

Innovation is an insult to the gods—it is criminal for outraged ancestors will visit their wrath upon the tribe. In primitive society, no matter how a practice originates, it tends to harden into a habit rigidly and religiously adhered to. Morality is identified with custom—that which is customary is right, if it is uncustomary it is wrong. This veneration for practices ages old makes very difficult, sometimes impossible, the understanding of many a moral custom where the real needs which brought it into existence have long passed away.

The “closeness” of primitive man’s societies—the importance given to blood kinship and the intolerance and hatred of strangers is reflected in his religious views. As Edward Jenks says in his excellent little “History of Politics,” “The view that their ancestors belonged to them alone, naturally made the tribesmen very jealous of strangers acquiring any knowledge of their forms of worship.” (P. 38.) Therefore the ritual was kept strictly secret, and it was the blackest treachery to reveal its mysteries to strangers, who would only mock and blaspheme.

The belief in spirits is the cause of eome of the most peculiar practices and moral ideas of primitive man. Attention to the requirements of the dead is a profound duty. Tools, weapons, and animals are buried or burned with the corpse for the use of the spirit. Food and drink must be provided in the shape of offerings made at the grave. Human and animal sacrifices are made. Charms are worn to ward off evil spirits-—the ghosts of aliens. Human spirits are believed to enter the bodies of certain animals and trees which then become “taboo”—objects of respect and fear which it is awful sacrilege to destroy or injure. But the effects of savage superstition are almost endless in their number and variety so that the above sketchy indications must suffice.

* * *

The social organisation, therefore, of man in savagery and lower barbarism, together with the morality which therefrom flowed was based as the above testifies upon the principle of mutual aid and communal support in its every aspect. No class interests marred its unity despite its many (to most moderns) anomalous and absurd characters. Moral theory and practice were identical, modern conventional morality and corresponding hypocrisy was unknown—the “age of cant” was not yet. This was only acquired during his “rise to civilisation” which will be our next consideration.

R. W. Housley

(*) The widespread view, to which we have made previous reference, that a people’s ethical code is ordained by God arises in the above way, for gods are as a rule, only exalted ancestral spirits.

To be Continued.

How society changes (1954)

From the October 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anthropology has always been an interesting subject to Socialists. Morgan's Ancient Society and Engels’ Origin of the Family, are only two of the books which have helped us to see how society has changed and developed in the past, and therefore gives us an indication of how it is likely to change in the future.

This process of change is very clearly shown in a report by Dr. Ralph Linton, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, which appears in the book "The Individual and His Society," by Kardiner and Linton.

The report derives from Linton's own field work among the Tapala and Betsileo tribes in the island of Madagascar, and relates how a simple change in the mode of production revolutionised a whole tribal society. 

The Tanala

On a forested mountain plateau live the Tanala. They are an agricultural tribe, living mainly by rice cultivation. They grow the rice “dry"—that is, like an ordinary cereal. Only one or two crops can be raised on any one piece of land by the methods which they use; after that the land has to be allowed to grow up in jungle and left for ten to fifteen years.

At the beginning of the season the elders of the lineage arrange the heads of the families within that lineage along the edge of the land to be cleared for that year’s crop, and assign to each family a strip of given width. The men of each family then clear their strip as far back as they consider necessary to meet their rice needs for the year. This assignment is made equitably—if a family gets poor land one year it will be given good land the next. Each family has full rights on the strip which it has cleared while crops are actually being grown; after that it reverts to the general lineage property.

There are no ceremonies or magic connected with food, except for a small family offering made to the ancestors at harvest time. Everything except land is individually owned, but there is little, if any, difference between rich and poor in living standards, and there are no social classes.

Wet Rice

Such a description is far from complete, of course; but it does give one a picture of the sort of society which Linton found still existing among the Tanala. It was a society which consisted of a number of independent mobile villages, where money was unimportant, where a large degree of social equality prevailed, and where anxiety about property was very largely absent. But even while Linton was there, important and far-reaching changes had been brought about by a gradual change from dry rice to wet rice cultivation. The latter is the ordinary type of rice growing found in India, China, etc., where permanent paddy-fields are used. To the ordinary observer, this change might seem trifling, but to a Socialist it is far from insignificant, because it affects the economic basis of the society. Let Linton take up the story from here:—

“ [Wet rice cultivation] was at first an adjunct to dry rice carried on by individual families. Before the new method was introduced on a large scale, there were already rice swamps of permanent tenure, which never reverted to the village for reassignment. But land favourable for this use was very limited, because of natural factors. Thus there gradually emerged a group of landowners, and with the process came a breakdown in the joint family organization. The cohesiveness of this older unit was maintained by economic interdependence and the need for co-operation. But an irrigated rice field could be tended by a single family, and its head need not recognise any claim to share it with anyone who had not contributed to its produce.

“This group of permanent rice sites formed the nucleus of a permanent village, because the land could not be exhausted as was the land exploited by the dry method. As land suitable for wet rice near the village was presently all taken up. the landless households had to move farther and farther away into the jungle. So far away would they be that they could not return the same day. These distant fields also became household rather than joint family affairs . . . (p.282) 

“The mobile villages had been self contained and endogamous. The settled villages were much less so . . . Intermarriages became common. In this way, the transformation from independent villages to a tribal organization took place 

“The process brought further changes in the patterns of native warfare. The old village had to be defended; but not at so great a cost nor with the necessity for permanent upkeep. When the village became permanent the defences had to be  of a powerful kind involving big investments and permanent upkeep.

“Slaves who were of no economic significance in the old system, now acquired economic importance. . . .  Thus the tribal organization grew in solidity, and with the change the old tribal democracy disappeared. The next step was a king at the head who exercised control over the settled elements but not over the mobile ones." (p.283.) There were now real differences between rich and poor. Poverty and oppression became known for the first time among the Tanala.

The Betsileo

Now let us look at the Betsileo, near neighbours of the Tanala, whose society has been based for a long time on wet rice cultivation. There are more swamps and valleys in their part of the country, and they have also taken up irrigation. But from all indications, their original set-up was the same as that of the Tanala. Basically, “we can regard Betsileo as the Tanala culture, after all the changes consequent upon wet rice had become consolidated, organized, and institutionalized. We are therefore observing an important experiment in the dynamics of social changed (p. 284.)

Among the Betsileo there is a rigid system of ground rent, paid by a proportion of the produce. There is a rigid class system, with a king, nobles, commoners and slaves. The powers of the king are absolute over the life and property of everyone. “In short, here was a feudal system of a kind” (p. 285.)

The power of the father in the household became supreme, particularly in the sense of ownership. Unlike the Tanala system, among the Betsileo all household property belongs to the father except his wives' clothes and gifts to his wife and children. Children not infrequently desert their parents—a thing unknown among the Tanala.

There is much more emphasis on the supernatural. “ The Betsileo make a clear distinction between life and soul. Life ceases with death, the soul continues.” (p. 288.) Much of this interest has to do with apprehensions over losing money or position.

The Process of Change

Here, then, we see social change in action. We see changes in the mode of production causing changes in types of ownership. We see these new types of ownership causing changes in the relations which one person can have to another. We see new attitudes arising out of these relations. We see new institutions arising out of these attitudes. (We see these new institutions causing further changes of attitude, and so on). We see, as Linton has already pointed out, the dynamics of social change in action.

Here is another clear and valuable example of a process which is going on daily and hourly around us here in the world today. Let no one say that the Materialist Conception of History is a mere empty theory when we can see it justified up to the hilt in such a practical example as this.

The whole book is of some interest to Socialists, since the main author. Dr. Abram Kardiner, openly acknowledges the great debt which social anthropology owes to historical materialism. Here is another example of the way in which ideas long put forward by Socialists are being today painfully rediscovered by the academic world.

J. C. Rowan

Sting in the Tail: A saint he ain’t (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

A saint he ain’t

Pope John XXIII, Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and Cardinal Newman are among more than 70 names being considered by the Church of England as candidates for its version of sainthood (Guardian, 12 July).

Bizarre choices, perhaps, but even more so is William Morris, 19th century artist and revolutionary socialist, who is also included.

Did Morris believe in God? After speaking about socialism at one meeting, Morris was told by a clergyman:

"That’s an impossible dream of yours, Mr Morris; such a Society would need God Almighty Himself to manage it. Morris got up . . . and shaking his fist to emphasise his words, he said, ‘well, damn it, man, you catch your God Almighty — we’ll have him!' "

Had he even any time for the C of E? Indeed “he drove home the fact that organised religion was one of the strongest pillars of capitalist orthodoxy’” (Both quotes from E.P. Thompson’s William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary).

Getting death-bed converts is one thing, but grave-robbing is something else.

More snouts for the trough

The horses galloped and the women in silly hats paraded alongside a select crowd of businessmen, politicians, diplomats, etc. A scene from Royal Ascot? No, this was Warsaw racecourse and the event was the Summer Gala held by the Business Centre Club (BCC), Poland’s equivalent of the CBI.

BCC’s chairman told the guests that the Club’s members, representing 600 companies with combined capital of $19.3 billion, “form the nucleus of Poland’s incipient middle-class”, and a Cardinal completely misjudged his audience by appealing “for ethics and fair play in business”.

All this is reported in the English-language newspaper Warsaw Voice (16 July) which also told us that, following the speeches, the guests “rushed” to get at the free food and drink provided, and added: “However, food and drink did not stand in the way’ of talk about money and new deals. ”

Ex-communists in the government arc apparently holding-up the development of full-blooded private enterprise capitalism in Poland, but not so as you’d notice.

Class confusion

Some workers imagine they are “professionals”, “middle class” or even “upper middle class”. They say “I get a salary not a wage, I wear a collar and tie and not hobnailed boots and overalls.”

Even capitalists are deluded about class. Paul McCartney, the musician and reputedly worth £420 million is clueless:

“People say’, ‘Oh no, you’re too rich to be working class ’and I say ‘No, no, it's a state of mind working class, it’s not a bank balance ’" (Independent on Sunday, 16 July).

It’s a daft situation when a £250-a-week clerk claims he is not working class and a multi-millionaire claims he is.

If you own little or nothing and have to seek work for a wage or a salary you are a member of the working class. If you own enough of the means of production and can live on rent, interest and profit you are a member of the capitalist class. Got it, Paul?

It ain’t you

While some workers desperately check their numbers on the National Lottery' and cut their expectations from millions to thousands and eventually to “Well, at least let’s hope the last number means I’ve won a tenner”; others connected with the scam are less anxious.

The Chief Executive of Camelot, Tim Holley, has a salary of £200,000 per year, benefits worth £11,367, a bonus of £ 120,000 and a pension contribution worth £112,000. He can expect another annual bonus of 50 percent of his salary if Camelot exceed target returns.

So while that big advertising ghostly finger points to Tim every week it is giving you the two-fingered salute.

A rich survey

Yet another survey of incomes and social attitudes has been published.

According to the Western Daily Press (12 July) this one, “Targeting the Rich and the Poor”, by Mintel Marketing Research, has come up with such startling revelations as, the rich are happier and more optimistic than the poor, and the rich will get richer while the poor will get poorer. Presumably, someone actually pays for this stuff

MMR defines the poor as households with an average weekly income of £112 while the rich have an average weekly income of £800. There’s no doubt that the former are poor but can most of the latter really be rich? Since £800 is an average then many in this category' must have incomes well below this.

Anyway, even £800 a week is peanuts compared to what the genuinely rich get, and in fact most of MMR’s “rich” are merely relatively well-paid workers. This “Targeting” has missed its mark by a mile.

It can be done

Who says that a moneyless society based on production for use and democratic control by the whole community is impossible?

The Johannesburg Star (24 June) provides evidence that the Sahrawi desert nomads of Western Sahara live in just such a society,  “In this strange society there is no money. Everyone works for the benefit of all", and there is democratic decision-making at every level.

No doubt the Sahrawi will eventually be drawn into the world-capitalist economy and their way of life will be eroded and finally destroyed, but they have shown that people can live in the way that we socialists advocate and work for.

Tribalism, colonialism and capitalism (2000)

From the December 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The festering of tribalist, nationalist and racist sentiment are nurtured and sustained by the capitalist system

Within the context of neo-colonial statehood, tribalism is a colonial derivative based on matriarchal or patriarchal relations forged in the distant past and used by an ethnic group as a defensive and an offensive weapon against other groups. The position of some of those who see tribalism as the main cause of Africa’s present social and economic predicament follows a familiar pattern of thinking. The colonialists, according to them, tried to make a nation-state out of a hotch-potch of antagonistic and uncivilised African peoples but failed in their pious mission. The various tribes had age-long hatred for one another and as soon as the colonial power went the natives descended into barbarism maiming and killing each other.

Nationalists in Africa see the matter differently, painting idyllic pictures of the African past and blaming all the tribal conflicts that have erupted after independence solely on colonialism. This viewpoint is as historically incorrect as it is undialectical. Facts abound on how the internal evolution of some African communities before colonialism and mercantile capitalism had provided groups of people the opportunity to appropriate the labour of others, accumulate economic surplus and consequently subjugate other communities. This is a scenario that must have generated a certain level of tribal animosity and discrimination based on economic exploitation and wealth, even if this was on a minor scale compared with the situation in colonial times and the post-independence era. It was these differences that were deliberately and carefully nurtured by the colonialists, and later exploited by the neo-colonial bourgeoisie after independence to keep the people manacled to the capitalist system.

In colonial times

Colonialism whether it was of the British, Belgian, French or German variety was not meant to be a benign enterprise. The motive behind its establishment was one: the exploitation of labour and the accumulation of economic surplus. Consequently, the driving force behind it, capitalism, did not spare the exploitation of labour in both the metropolis and other lands even if it meant spilling blood to fulfil this sordid agenda.

This mercenary impulse had implied increased production, technological expansion, the growth of the external and domestic market and ultimately the annexation and political control of other territories. Tribal groups which stood in the way were, in colonial parlance, pacified. But if, as suggested in some quarters, the colonial enterprise had meant to pacify and carve out viable nation-states capable of competing with metropolitan capitalism, the monopolistic tendency and vampire essence of the profit system would have been still-born. Far from creating problems for itself, its policy towards the people of the colonies was guided by the trinitarian doctrine—atomisation, exploitation and domination. This unfolded in its pattern of social and economic investment in what came to be known as Ghana and before that as the Gold Coast.

British colonial policy encouraged investments in only those areas of the colony which were endowed with mineral and forest resources. This pattern of investment engendered considerable regional variations in terms of the provision of roads, railway lines and social services. Thus the Southern Sector which by virtue of its location abounded in timber, gold and fertile soil benefited far more in terms of infrastructural development than the Northern territories which did not have any known mineral resources. But even in the Southern part of the colony there was discrimination in the provision of amenities on the basis of the contribution to the exportable surplus. The pattern of investment that characterised British economic policy was not born out of any preference for the Asante over the Dagarti, but based on cold capitalist reasoning. After all, some minimum maintenance of workers’ health and education was a reasonable investment since it ensured the maximisation of the extraction of surplus from the worker; and the greedy capitalists by their calculations knew this too well.

How did this promote tribalism? By annexing the Gold Coast and putting the people in a subordinate status, the British colonial power froze any further evolution and consolidation of a national identity. For example, it destroyed the principal catalyst for achieving the unity of fragmented loyalties. Not only did colonialism deprive states like Benin, Oyo and Asante of all their principal vassals and tributary states, but it followed up the process of fragmentation by smashing the basis of the hegemonic power of these states thus giving full rein to all manner of divisive tendencies.

While pretending to be carrying out a mission of uniting the incorrigibly warring tribes British colonial policy consciously and systematically separated the various people, creating conflict and ill-will among them. The colonial government sometimes saw the value of stimulating tribal jealousies so as to keep the colonised from dealing with their principal opposition—the colonial and the emergent African bourgeoisie who together were milking the people.

By categorising the various linguistic subgroups in the Gold Coast—Frafra, Dagarti, Ninkarsi Kusaasi, Dagomba, Akyim, Asante and Fanti—as tribes the colonial regime began to nurture parochial and exclusivist consciousness among people who previously had regarded themselves as one. All official documents in colonial times, for example, required information on the place of origin and ethnic background of the individual. Names were thus suffixed with one’s tribal background and area of origin. Feeling regarded as a member of an ethnic group by others and that they would behave towards you accordingly, individuals began to feel the need to identify more closely with their “kith and kin” and to promote its interest relative to others.

Racist colonial ideology ignored the fact that the people of the Gold Coast shared a common heritage of colonial oppression and colonially-induced capitalist exploitation with its concomitant ills: poverty, ignorance, disease and malnutrition. As a result, its philosophy of determining the inferiority or superiority of a people in terms of the extent to which they had culturally imbibed all what the colonial establishment represented came to dominate the worldview of some Africans.

Colonial ideology and culture operated on the basis of a hierarchy of cultures in which that of the metropolitan bourgeoisie was supposed to be supreme. The culture of the country of origin of the metropolitan bourgeoisie therefore became the standard by which a people’s level of primitiveness or barbarism was determined. The more your thinking, values and mannerisms were close to the colonialists’ the more human you were; and by implication the further your behaviour and outlook were from the masters’ the less human you were. This explained why the rich and educated elite who were products of the colonial educational system did not answer questions in their African dialect but in English. They talked about the opera which they had never seen except from a distance, referred to winter and Buckingham Palace and, above all, adopted a critical attitude towards other Africans who they derogatively referred to as “bush people”.

But the idea of trying to approximate to the coloniser was not only to be found in the relations between the African and the European coloniser. Sometimes Africans tried to approximate their status to other Africans if they thought those individuals enjoyed a higher status. African ethnic groups which had a high number of educated and rich people within them as a result of their long contact with the coloniser tended to feel superior to others. Even if they were poor and illiterate they identified psychologically with those in their tribal group who were rich and educated. It did not matter to the poor Asante, Frafra or Ewe person if all of them were victims of crude exploitation by colonialism and the African bourgeoisie. In their minds, the identification with the tribal big boss and the fact that they came from the same ethnic background was enough, even if it did not ensure the enjoyment of a spoon of marmalade from the master’s table. These exclusivist and warped thinking explained why a poor Asante for example could feel deeply offended if he was mistaken for a Busanga or any other tribe. This not only lead to more barriers between the ethnic groups but effectively undermined their capacity to confront capitalist exploitation. The inter-ethnic struggle for superiority or at least to avoid the stigma of inferiority dissipated the energies of the people.

Tribalism today

The African bourgeoisie which assumed the mantle of power after colonial rule also did not fail to realise the usefulness of tribalism in the struggle against the African masses. Like racial violence in Europe, tribalism was a means to an end: deflecting the anger of the masses from the neo-colonial bourgeoisie and directing it at other members of the working class. In another sense it was the most convenient cover for the capitalist robbers who stole economic surplus from the working class and poor peasants. The attitude of the African bourgeoisie towards the colonial state that it inherited, therefore, was not that of dismantling and radically transforming the exploitative relations of production. It was guided by the desire to inherit the colonial state-machine and seek accommodation with international capital in the extraction of economic surplus from the working people. Consequently, post-independence politics in Africa has witnessed the arousal and manipulation of tribal passions and petty differences among ethnic groups, for the same sordid reasons that the bourgeoisie in Europe sometimes find convenient it to use racism.

The predatory character of capitalism coupled with the hollowness and hypocrisy of the African bourgeoisie created fertile conditions for the festering of this cancerous disposition. Slogans, values and the moral high ground postured by the bourgeoisie as events unfolded long after independence have been blatantly self-serving. As for their masters abroad, the state machinery has now become an important instrument in their quest for capital accumulation at the expense of the masses, whom they claim in political party campaigns to be liberating from poverty, disease, etc. However, given the peculiar historical and economic circumstances in which it has had to evolve it is not an exact carbon copy of its masters abroad.

The African bourgeoisie is more desirous of imbibing the lifestyles and privileges of its overlords in Europe and America than showing the creative and strong interest in production that marked the genesis of the bourgeoisie in Europe. Its extravagance and neo-colonial conditions have been at the core of the steep declines of production levels in recent times, leading to shocking levels of destitution and poverty. But it is precisely these conditions of want that the bourgeoisie has shamelessly manipulated to scuttle the unity of the dispossessed in the towns using tribalism as a tool.

Cruel economic conditions have forced many residents in poverty-stricken suburbs to seek help and protection by means of a network of social obligations, transferring some of their traditional feudal loyalties and institutions to the urban environment. Most ethnic groups in Accra, Kumasi and Sekondi-Takordi have installed chiefs to whom they pay allegiance and seek protection. Tribal associations have also been formed to advance the cause of particular ethnic groups and used as sources of benefit: help in finding a job, accommodation, money and credit. People also stick together to make common cause against other tribal groups in the struggle for economic survival in the dog-eat-dog environment that has been created by capitalism.

It is these tribal associations that provide arenas for the various factions of the bourgeoisie to launch offensives and counter-offensives against each other in their struggle for political and economic power. Events in the run-up to this month’s presidential election in Ghana provide ample testimony of this, as many of such groups with the backing of the bourgeoisie have sprung up, all seeking to advance the interest of the bourgeoisie in the various ethnic groups. They have organised and whipped up the sentiments of the lower strata of their tribespeople against rivals belonging to different ethnic groups. They have created the impression that it is only when one of your tribesmen is at the helm of affairs that you can have a fair share of national development and individual personal advancement. Consequently, where a presidential or vice-presidential candidate comes from has become extremely important.

But as it has always been the case after every election, and will surely be the case after this month’s elections, that those factions that win the election will easily forget about the ethnic support base they so subtly manipulated to propel themselves to power. They will shun the company of their poor tribespeople who supported them and will fraternise closely with their allies in other ethnic groups. The rancour and bitterness that characterised their relations will soon be forgotten, except on political party platforms. They will play tennis, billiards and golf together and discuss lucrative business contracts in posh hotels. As for their indigent brethren who had worked tirelessly to put them in power, they will have to start thinking seriously about how to pay school fees, feed the family, and get good accommodation.

The festering of tribalist, nationalist and racist sentiment are nurtured and sustained by the capitalist system of production which produces only for profits and not for needs. The abolition of the profit system and its replacement with socialism based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for production and distribution would put an end to discrimination and bigotry. But this cannot happen unless people understand and see the need for this kind of change. More than ever before, the formation of socialist parties in Africa to take up the task of spreading the socialist message has become urgent.

Adongo Aidan Avugma

Between the Lines: Primitive . . . (1989)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Primitive . . .

Marx wrote about the increasing misery of the working class. By this he did not mean, as some who have tried to refute him have suggested, that wages would fall lower and lower, material conditions ever more harsh. Marx was right: the quality of living under capitalism becomes ever-more impoverished.

Country File (C4) provides a pleasant diversion on the bleakest of urban Sunday lunchtimes. It has features on farming and conservation and the world of animals: it reminds the viewer that, stuck with the noise and dirt of an artificial city, there is an environment beyond which is richer in what is natural and more in harmony with the senses. On 8 January it had a report about a growing social problem: rural violence committed by young frustrated workers in small country towns and villages — the children of the land whose daddies do not own the fields and whose futures are in the cities, where there is more chance of jobs. Others involved in recent acts of rural criminality are farm labourers whose jobs have been made more tedious by mechanisation and who are often paid below-poverty wages for making landowners rich. A police officer from Avon and Somerset spoke of how Saturday-night gangs were terrorising villages and vandalising beauty spots. There have even been reports in the press of the senseless slaughter of farm animals for fun.

No doubt there were irritated viewers in Devon or Yorkshire who switched on expecting to see how big turnips can be and how green fields can look in the right light. Such people would do well to ponder that life is becoming increasingly empty for vast numbers of young workers, squashed as they are between the obscenities of the bomb and the social mind of a world which is civilised only to degree that it offers hope when there is a likely profit attached.

The following evening World In Action (ITV, 8.30 pm) reported the results of a nationwide survey which revealed that women were more afraid of violent assault in the streets than death from cancer, being killed on the roads or nuclear war. Ninety per cent feared being attacked if they went out at night. Sixty-seven per cent said that they never go out at night alone. What an indictment of a so-called civilised society it is that the majority of women — the majority of the population — are too frightened to go out alone in the evening. This is the social-pay-off of the competitive society. The streets become a jungle where anyone with money, however old, frightened or disabled, is prey to the muggers. Women workers are right to be scared. Street assaults are frequent: more dangerous weapons are now used by the muggers (in imitation of our rulers who also like to sophisticate their murder instruments regularly); and most of us live in badly lit environments, which assist the fast-money attackers. The thief thieves because it is an easy way to make money. Ethics do not enter into it; he is a reflection of the economic motives of the more successful robbers in the City, whose activities are strictly legal.

It is not just that women are likely to be attacked, but that they feel threatened. Every walk in the dark streets feels like preparation for an attack. Young men are eight times more likely to be mugged than women, but this is a deceptive statistic: women are less likely to be mugged because so many are forced to seek refuge in their homes every night. They are under curfew. There is no way that a society which scares its inhabitants to that extent can ever be worthy of the description of “civilisation". The simple-minded blame the muggers, as if knife-carrying kids have chosen such a way of life as an alternative to the gentlemen's club. Socialists blame the profit system.

. . . and civilised

The same people that the profit system twists into muggers could, in different material circumstances, behave like the people of the Baka tribe, shown in three programmes by Channel Four called Baka — People Of The Rainforest. Modern society sneers at such primitive social relationships. The programmes allowed us to glimpse into the moneyless, wageless, stateless world of one of the few extant pre-property societies. Of course, the Baka are productively unsophisticated and have to work harder than they would need to do had they access to labour-saving technology. They are still innocently religious, regarding Nature as something above them and largely beyond control. It would be foolishly romantic — although very tempting — to depict primitive communism as The Way We Should Live. But what if we took all of the machinery of production which exists in modern Britain (where women are afraid to walk city streets and rural areas are echoing to the sound of furious working-class frustration) and combined it with the human relations of classless equality which characterise primitive communities? That is the prospect which world socialism holds before us now. We could have a society where people co-operate to produce the best that there can be to satisfy the needs of all; instead we have a society shown to us in a documentary by Clive James called Postcard From Chicago (11 January, BBC1, 9.30 pm) in which we were introduced to the gangs which inhabit the city's slum areas. These gangs — The People and The Folk — do not merely shout abuse at each other. They shoot — to kill.

Gang warfare, born of urban poverty, is a game that ends in murder. Often the killers and killed are in their mid-teens. Now. James is one of those "witty" types who likes to enchant the half-witted with empty aphorisms. It's seductive viewing, but a lot of tripe is squeezed into the maxims. For example, in watching workers making hamburgers in Chicago (note: you will always see James watching people work) he stated that “Marx had it all wrong”. There is no alienation; these descendants of Polish immigrants feel close to their work and are grateful to be close to food — unlike in Poland where they would have to queue for it. This self-evident rubbish is supposed to pass for serious social commentary. By the same reasoning. Rolls Royce car producers are not alienated from the luxury cars they produce — even though they may travel home from work in a second-hand Cortina. Clive James is, in fact, a virulent anti-socialist. That he is witty and entertaining makes him an all the more potent one.

Is Britain free?

Panorama (BBC1, 9.25 pm. 9 January) was all about the diminishing freedom which many of us perceive in Britain at the moment. The government, in the name of freedom, has made numerous moves to curtail trade union and civil freedoms which workers fought hard to win. But even without the much-discussed Thatcherite assault, a society without free access to goods and services can never be free. That conception of freedom was not once mentioned in the programme. It is as if the fullest extent of “freedom" can only ever mean a loosening of the chains. I fell asleep after ten minutes of the great debate about whether Britain is unfree, woke up to see Willie Whitelaw sounding silly and switched over to Minder (ITV), where one can see a far more vivid picture of phoney freedom and increasing misery under the capitalist social system.

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note:

For some reason the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard misnamed 'Baka — People Of The Rainforest' as 'Baka — Children Of The Rain Forest'. I'm not sure what happened there. In 2012 the writer/director of the original documentary, Phil Agland, wrote and directed a follow up documentary entitled, 'Baka: A Cry from the Rainforest'. It can be viewed at the following link.

Society without exchange (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may be hard to imagine a society totally without exchange, but nevertheless for the vast majority of human history, around 15.000 years, this was exactly the way things were organised in a stage of human history called primitive communism.

At this time humanity lived a tribal existence with each member of the tribe as important as another: the men as hunters, the women as gatherers of fruit and roots. The young, as the future of the tribe, the old as the wisdom of the tribe, who knew the migratory patterns of animals, where the best roots could be found and much more besides. When the men and women returned with food it was not (as portrayed in some of the more pathetic films such as One Million Years BC) a mad rush for food and the strongest getting the most but a fair and equitable share-out, as the tribe realised the importance of each member of their society.

Examples can still be found today of such tribal societies: the Kalahari Bushmen and Pinaro Indians to name but two who, when first confronted by colonialists and asked about greed and property and who owned what, could not even find words in their language for such concepts and would end up laughing and looking bemused.

Socialist society

The Socialist Party however is not advocating a return to primitive communism. Far from it. but we can learn from history. Socialism must be on a world-wide scale, to replace worldwide capitalism — no individual countries, just one world. Also, it can only be established when the majority understand and want it. There will be no leaders and it can only be brought about democratically, by the ballot box, through conscious political action.

Socialism is only viable when the means of producing and distributing wealth are sufficient to provide for everyone's needs. Even the most conservative estimates of food production conclude that with farming methods now available we could feed six times the present population of the world — a total of five billion people.

Money is only necessary today because, living in capitalism, the means of producing and distributing wealth are in the hands of a tiny minority of the population. A person's position in society is determined by their relationship to these means of production. If someone is lucky enough to be one of the owning minority then they are members of a capitalist class whose ownership of the means of producing wealth means that they do not have to work but are able to live off rent, interest and profit. If however you are one of the vast majority of people who do not own factories, banks, shipping lines or whatever, then you are a member of the working class. You must make a living by selling the only thing of any value you own; this is your labour power — your ability to work — for which you receive a wage or salary.

Some people say that even workers do not have to work. They could live on social security, but anyone who has tried to manage on this pittance realises how hollow this argument is and that, if a worker is able to get a "decent" wage, he or she is forced by necessity to take it.

Workers, even though they and their class produce everything in society and run it from top to bottom, are only able to gain access to the fruits of their labour through money. A worker who helps to produce, for example, £50.000 worth of cars a week will only receive a small fraction of this in wages; the rest is the surplus value (unpaid labour) extracted from all workers, which yields the rent, interest and profit from which capitalists derive their wealth.

In socialism however things will be very different. Once a majority of people want and understand socialism and how to get it, then they will take control of the various state machines and implement it. When socialism is established the land, factories, transport — all the things we need to live — will be taken into common ownership and democratic control. No one will own anything (apart, of course, from personal items). This is not to be confused with nationalisation, which is merely state controlled capitalism as exists in countries such as Russia. China and Cuba.

Production for Use

How will things be produced? Who will produce them? They will be produced as they are now. by the people who produce them now. The important difference will be that instead of the rationing of a wage or salary, there will be free access to all wealth for everyone. Everything produced will go into a common store from which everyone will take what they need. Everyone will have free access to the common store because you cannot buy what already belongs to you and everyone else. People will not be left out because they are too old, young or sick to contribute to production as happens now. These people will be looked after to the best of society's ability. Things will be produced directly for human use, not for sale with a view to profit as now. when, if there is no profit there is no production and if you are unable to pay then you are not able to consume.

Human Nature

One of the arguments socialists often encounter is that all the greedy and selfish people will take more than they need. How correct is this argument?

First of all, in a socialist society people would have to be very greedy and foolish to consume so much as to cause any kind of problem. However, apart from that the notion of greedy people is quite wrong.

"Human nature" does not exist. Human behaviour, which is its proper title, is not fixed but is the result of the society people are conditioned to live in. At present we all live in a "dog eat dog" society of competition; a vicious society where the weak are fair game. Yet even now anyone can point to examples where people forget about the greedy nature of this society to help others. They co-operate even though there is no economic reward; think of voluntary workers, or blood donors for example. There is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate even further in a sane society based on cooperation.

So-called human nature is no barrier to a concept of “from each according to ability, to each according to need". Human beings are not naturally greedy, selfish, aggressive, or naturally anything else; human behaviour is determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. There is only one barrier to socialism: a lack of understanding by people and therefore a lack of desire for it — in other words, a lack of socialists.

The Socialist Party does not have or need leaders; the party is only used by politically conscious socialists as a vehicle to get socialism; when socialism is established the need for the Socialist Party will disappear. Its job done, it will go out of existence.

Steve Colborn

The Romance of Ages (1964)

A classic reprint from the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard 

  From the treasury of past Socialist Standards we have selected the following four articles for reprinting in this Special Number. The choice was not easy to make from so much excellence.

Down from the tree-tops he came, primeval man, driven by hunger to wander through the forest with his kin searching for the nuts, roots and fruits on which he lived. He was the oldest specimen of his race and wandered over Europe when the climate was tropical and palms and tropical animals abounded. He required no clothes as the hair covering his body was sufficient protection in the mild climate then prevailing. His only weapons and tools were the branches torn from trees and the rough stones picked out of the beds of water-courses. He had learnt the art of communicating his primitive ideas by means of speech liberally helped out with gestures. His family arrangements were those of the brute from which he had just branched off, no rule had yet grown to guide him higher. He wandered widely over Europe before the coming of the ice drove him towards the Equator.

Slowly, very slowly, and painfully, man acquired more knowledge. A new type arose born during the breaks in the great ice ages. He discovered the wonderful properties of fire, and was able to add fish to his diet, a new weapon with which to fight hunger. Fire severed the cord that bound him to the forests and he wandered widely over the earth in the open, following the courses of the streams that provided him with fish. Out of the beds of streams he took rough stones and fashioned them into crude implements. His habitations were the beds of streams and holes in the hills. He peopled the hills, the woods, and the streams with living beings. The tree that fell on and crushed him, the rocks that impeded his passage, the mighty torrents, became to him objects endowed with life as he was—Religion was born. He wrought on the rough stone making for himself a stone-headed club and spear and became a hunter, strengthening himself in the fight against hunger by the addition of occasional supplies of meat to his food. The evil results of promiscuous marriage were modified by the growth of a rule prohibiting the marriage of parents to children.

Years passed away by the thousand and he learnt to make bows and arrows. Hunting became easier and meat became a more regular part of his food. On clay and stone, on the sides of his caves, using sharp-pointed wood or stone for pens, he sketched rude pictures of the animals he hunted, and the animals that hunted him. With the aid of fire he furnished himself with log boats to carry him over the water. He learnt to weave and make baskets and to make tools out of the bones of animals. He built himself huts and set them out in the form of village settlements—the town was born. He modified still further his marriage relations, and prohibited the marriage of brothers and sisters. He had by now gathered together some property and the seeds of the subsequent class struggles were planted. 

This property was held at first by women. He stepped higher in his religious ideas, and worshipped the elements; the earthquake, the cyclone, the cloudburst, inspired him with awe and he trembled before nature’s terrors and sought to find means to propitiate the mighty powers that so often involved him in wreck and ruin. He grew in numbers and lived in larger groups. These large groups were separated into gentes, phratries and tribes, or groups of close kinship, groups of near cousins, and groups of distant cousins. He improved his language and learnt the use of syllables. He polished up his stone implements and produced wonderful specimens of polished stone tools. The huge fierce animals that had harassed him of yore began to give way to a smaller and less ferocious kind, and the limbs, stature and gait of man lost much of their strength and uncouthness, becoming more beautiful as befitted one grasping at the conquest of nature.

With the discovery of pottery man continued his upward climb and found means to store his ever-growing varieties of food. He tanned the skin of the deer and took a pride in his personal adornment. He built himself villages surrounded by stockades, tamed the dog as a companion for hunting and learned how to make bread. His numbers had now grown so large that much of his attention was taken up with social organisation. The tribes had grown into numerous tribes living in a confederacy under a council of chiefs—the state was born. His religious ideas had moved upward to the conception of a great spirit that ruled his destiny, and the dreams that troubled his sleep became to him evidences of the wanderings of himself in other lands. His rude attempts at art grew into the making of pictures that conveyed ideas to those at a distance—the art of writing was born.

Some of the animals he hunted he learnt to domesticate and secured for himself a regular supply of milk and meat. But he did more. The work to be done in attending to flocks and herds was little. It was possible to supply the needs of many by the labour of few. Man at last was able to provide a surplus on which non-workers could live. Man learned the lesson well and in the wars on his kind he obtained captives who were put to work looking after the herds, thus giving leisure to the owners of the herds—in such wise was born the slavery that flourishes to-day.

Man cleared the forests and converted them into arable land and land on which to pasture his flocks. He cultivated gardens and raised root crops, pushing farther away his age-long enemy hunger. His wealth and responsibilities grew so much that he built for himself habitations of wood, mud and stone, and surrounded them with fortifications for the safe-keeping of his utensils and his cattle and to guard against the attacks of others of his kind. He added to his implements, his utensils, his weapons, and his ornaments by learning to manipulate metals—he had left the age of stone and entered the age of bronze. He built villages on the waters at the edges of lakes, safe from marauding animals and men. He made for himself personal gods, with idols and appointed officials to interpret the method of worship—priesthood had come into being. His council chiefs became organised into a close corporation, limiting election of officials to members of their families—aristocracy was born. He learnt how to picture ideas instead of objects, so developing his means of communication by writing.

His garden cultivation grew into field culture by the discovery of iron and the subsequent invention of the ploughshare. He now changed his habitation into towns surrounded with walls and battlements. His growing wealth and aristocratic privileges brought on the first great class struggle— the struggle between man and woman as to who should own and bequeath the store of wealth that had accumulated. Man won, and changed the law of inheritance from the female to the male. Individual ownership of property and to some extent the private ownership of land followed.

With the discovery of letter script and its use for writing records man entered into his own as a civilised being. The rest is a matter of history.

Reader, the above is a painfully brief and scrappy description of man’s development during prehistoric times. If you would enter fully into the romance consult the books on the subject that abound and you will have no cause for regret. Most of what is written above you will find in “Ancient Society,” a book written by Lewis H. Morgan. Look for it in the library.

Gilmac.

Reprinted from the "Socialist Standard," June, 1925.